Good on Them

As you may be aware, the FBI's current headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, is crumbling, and they are building a new one.

It has not been named yet, but the smart money is on their naming it after Hoover as well.

It appears that a fair number of FBI agents don't like the idea of naming the building after a rogue and corrupt law enforcement official:

A debate is brewing inside the Beltway and beyond, pitting some current and retired FBI agents against one another in a fight over the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover and whether the name of the Bureau’s first and most controversial director should grace the FBI’s proposed new $1.8 billion headquarters.

For more than 40 years since Hoover’s death a debate has raged about how to remember the man -- as an anti-crime and national security hero, a civil liberties-squashing villain or something in between -- and new interviews conducted by ABC News show that even among current and former agents and officials, there’s widely varying opinions on Hoover and the naming of the new headquarters.

“Hoover would have never let me become an agent because I’m a woman and Jewish,” a former FBI agent, who now works in private industry, told ABC News. “He did a lot of things he shouldn’t have done because he was given absolute power. He did a lot of hateful things. I would not like to see his name on the building.”

………

For more than a decade, members of Congress have, so far to no avail, introduced legislation to strip Hoover’s name from the current, sprawling headquarters at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, just blocks from the White House and Capitol. The last bill was introduced in 2015. Hoover died in 1972 after heading the FBI and its predecessor, The Bureau of Investigation, for nearly five decades.

James Comey, a former federal prosecutor who became the FBI’s seventh director in September 2013, publicly made critical comments about Hoover and his abuse of power. And the New York field office last year removed a mannequin-like figure of Hoover in the lobby because of objections of bureau workers who thought he no longer represented the FBI of today.

Hoover didn't just spy on people that he did not like. He blackmailed politicians to keep his position as well.

His name should no more go on a building that should that of Timothy McVey.